False Justice and the “True” Prosecutor: A Memoir,
Tribute, and Commentary
Mark A. Godsey
INTRODUCTION
This article is a review of False Justice: Eight Myths that Convict the
Innocent by Jim and Nancy Petro. But this article is also a memoir, in that I tell
the story, from my own perspective as Director of the Ohio Innocence Project, of
how I have watched Jim Petro go from prosecutor and elected Attorney General of
Ohio to a leading champion of the wrongfully convicted across the nation. The
article is also a commentary in that, along the way, I address what makes Jim Petro
so different from many prosecutors in this country. In this respect, I discuss
problems in our criminal justice system that unfortunately lead some prosecutors,
in far too many instances, to contest post-conviction claims of innocence in ways
that I believe are contrary to our profession’s ethical standards. In the end, I offer
Jim Petro as the true prosecutor. By “true,” I mean one who fully embodies
fairness, justice, and the highest ethical standards of our profession. With this
article, I hold out Jim Petro as a national model—an example that all other
prosecutors should strive to emulate.1
I. DNA TESTING FOR INMATES
My first interaction with Jim Petro occurred in 2003, shortly after he took
office as the Attorney General (AG) of Ohio. Petro had been elected AG
following a long and distinguished legal and political career, which included
service in the positions of Auditor of Ohio, state representative, county
commissioner, city director, and a stint as a felony trial prosecutor.2 I, too, was

Daniel P. and Judith L. Carmichael Professor of Law, University of Cincinnati College of
Law; Director, Lois and Richard Rosenthal Institute for Justice/Ohio Innocence Project; Director,
Center for the Global Study of Wrongful Conviction. E-mail: [email protected]. This article
is dedicated to my mother, Christine Godsey, for instilling in me a sense of justice.
1
I have come to believe that poor criminal defense work and defense ethics contribute just as
much to wrongful convictions, if not more so, than does anything done by police or prosecutors. By
focusing on problems on the prosecutorial side of the adversarial structure in this essay, I do not
mean to suggest that all of the fault lies with prosecutors and police officers. Rather, the book FALSE
JUSTICE naturally lends itself to a discussion of prosecutorial ethics, and thus, that is the subject
matter that I have developed herein. JIM PETRO & NANCY PETRO, FALSE JUSTICE: EIGHT MYTHS THAT
CONVICT THE INNOCENT (2010).
2
Petro’s legal and political career is discussed throughout FALSE JUSTICE. A summary is
available here: Biography: Jim Petro, SIMON & SCHUSTER, http://authors.simonandschuster.com/JimPetro/72540214/biography (last visited Mar. 24, 2012).
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new to my job when Petro and I first met. At that time, I had recently taken a
position as a criminal law professor at the University of Cincinnati (UC), following
a practice career that, like Petro, involved extensive service as a prosecutor.3 My
main goal in 2003, however, was to nurse to health the fledgling Ohio Innocence
Project (OIP)4 that I had recently co-founded at the law school with local political
official John Cranley5 and others.
Immediately upon arriving at UC and launching the OIP in early 2003, I
learned that a bill had recently been introduced in the Ohio legislature to give Ohio
inmates the right to prove their innocence through post-conviction DNA testing
(“SB11”). As this fell squarely within the OIP’s bailiwick, I immediately inserted
myself into the deliberative process in the legislature to make sure the final version
of the bill ended up as helpful to our cause as possible.
One day in about April of 2003, a conference call was scheduled to take place
between me and several representatives from police and prosecutor associations,
including the AG’s Office, to try to hammer out some of the remaining differences
in the bill. Generally speaking, the prosecutor and police organizations wanted to
make SB11 as narrow as possible (or kill the bill altogether) for fear that the law
would open the floodgates to DNA requests from tens of thousands of Ohio
inmates, clogging the courts and costing taxpayers a fortune. I was interested in
ensuring a more expansive right to post-conviction DNA testing along the lines of
what had been enacted in many other states at the time and believed the
“floodgates” argument was a red herring because it had not happened in other
states with similar laws.
About an hour before the conference call was to begin, I received a call from
Jim Canepa, Petro’s top assistant at the AG’s office. I had never spoken to Canepa
before. After he introduced himself, he said something to the effect of, “I’ve been
instructed by Petro to strategize with you before the conference call, so we can get
our ducks in a row and make sure we get a bill that will actually get some
meaningful DNA testing for inmates claiming innocence. We think the ‘floodgates
argument’ the prosecutors are floating is nonsense.” Canepa knew, like I did, that
other states that had enacted expansive DNA testing laws had not experienced the
“floodgates” phenomenon (and Canepa turned out to be correct with his
observation about Ohio, as Ohio did not experience the feared floodgates once the
law was eventually enacted). And for the next hour, that is exactly what Canepa
and I did: strategize on how to counter the prosecutors’ various objections to
SB11.
3
I served as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York from 1995 through
2001. I handled felony cases from investigation through trial and appeal, including cases involving
organized crime, public corruption, narcotics, white-collar crime, and extortion and murder.
4
To read about the Ohio Innocence Project, see THE OHIO INNOCENCE PROJECT,
http://www.law.uc.edu/institutes-centers/ohio-innocence-project (last visited Mar. 24, 2012).
5
John Cranley’s background is summarized here: John Cranley, KMK LAW, PLL,
http://www.kmklaw.com/assets/pdf/bio_124.pdf (last visited Mar. 24, 2012).
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Needless to say, I was surprised to have received this call. I had expected the
AG’s office to side with the prosecutors, as AG’s offices invariably do in other
states and imagined that the AG would be another obstacle to the more expansive
bill I sought. But as the process on the bill continued to unfold during 2003, I
eventually had a few personal interactions with Petro himself that confirmed what
the call from Canepa had foreshadowed—that Petro was a prosecutor who was
interested in justice first and foremost, above politics or anything else. He had a
sincere interest in making sure the system was fair and was not afraid to take on
county prosecutors or police associations to ensure such fairness. Throughout the
SB11 process, Petro and Canepa acted as reasonable mediators between the police,
prosecutors, and myself, and frequently took my side on specific issues. By the
end, I saw Petro and Canepa as collaborators rather than opponents. It was clear
that we were a team with similar interests in mind.
SB11 eventually passed with Canepa and Petro’s help, and then was amended
and expanded at least two additional times while Petro was in office. My
experiences with Petro and Canepa were the same each time the bill was expanded.
Petro was interested in making sure that DNA technology was widely available not
only to convict the guilty, but to free the innocent. And he was never afraid to take
on powerful institutions like the police and prosecutors’ associations to get it done.
Ultimately, many inmates were proven innocent and freed by DNA testing
pursuant to the bill and its iterations that followed, including the OIP clients
Raymond Towler (twenty-nine years in prison for a rape he did not commit);
Robert McClendon (eighteen years in prison for a rape he did not commit); and
Clarence Elkins (seven and a half years in prison for a murder and rapes he did not
commit), among others.
II. THE CLARENCE ELKINS CASE
My next encounter with Petro occurred not long after the SB11 process
wrapped up in the late summer of 2005, in connection with a case that Petro
recounts in detail in False Justice. The Clarence Elkins case out of Summit
County, Ohio, was a murder and rape case that I had worked on for the OIP since
January of 2004. There were two victims in the case: Judy Johnson, an elderly
woman who had been brutally raped and murdered by a middle-of-the-night
intruder in her home, and Brooke Sutton, Johnson’s six-year-old granddaughter
who had been spending the night with her grandmother the night of the attack.
After breaking in and raping and murdering Johnson, the perpetrator raped and
assaulted Brooke and left her for dead. Brooke fortunately regained consciousness
in the morning and ultimately survived. The six-year-old identified Clarence
Elkins, her uncle and the son-in-law of Johnson, as the perpetrator. In 1998, Elkins
was convicted based on his niece’s eyewitness testimony and sentenced to life.
Elkins had maintained his innocence from day one, and still maintained his
innocence from prison when I took over the case in 2004.
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By early 2005, after having a lab in Texas perform extensive DNA testing on
various items from the crime scene, we had discovered a male DNA profile on
swabs from Johnson’s vaginal cavity taken by the local coroner after her rape and
murder. This finding was significant because the DNA profile did not match
Clarence Elkins, and the evidence strongly suggested that Judy Johnson, a
widower, was not sexually active at the time. Thus, the male DNA in her vaginal
cavity had to have come from the perpetrator. Even more powerful, however, was
the fact that DNA testing revealed the same unknown man’s DNA profile on the
underwear Brooke had been wearing when she was attacked. Again, this DNA
profile belonged to an unknown man, and this man was not Elkins.6
As I argued to the trial court in our motion for a new trial hearing held in
Summit County in March of 2005, only one man’s DNA could be in both of these
very intimate locations on the night of the attack. That man would be the
perpetrator of these horrific crimes. Because Elkins was excluded as the source of
this DNA on both victims, he must be innocent and should be exonerated and
released.
Despite the obvious logical appeal of this argument, the prosecutors in
Summit County opposed our attempts to exonerate Elkins. The prosecutors argued
contamination, asserting that the male DNA profile found on the evidence could
have been placed there not at the time of the crime, but, perhaps, by a juror at trial.
But not only was there was no evidence to support this assertion, the argument was
flatly refuted by the trial record. It was clear that the envelope containing
Johnson’s vaginal swabs had not been opened between the time the coroner sealed
it in 1998 and the Texas DNA lab opened it in 2004. And why would a male juror
open up the plastic bag and touch Brooke’s bloody underwear thereby putting his
DNA on it? And even if some juror engaged in this bizarre behavior, did that same
male juror work in the coroner’s office months earlier and touch Johnson’s vaginal
swabs? How could this same juror have gotten his DNA on the swabs when the
envelope remained sealed during the trial? The prosecution’s argument made no
sense. As a former prosecutor, I could not understand why they were contesting
Elkins’ freedom with such ridiculous arguments.
In July of 2005, the trial court denied our motion, meaning that Elkins would
have to spend the rest of his life in prison for a crime that I knew he did not
commit. The trial court essentially adopted the arguments put forth by the
prosecution. This defeat was hard to fathom and more difficult to take. I could not
comprehend the judge’s decision. I knew something else must have been at work
here that I did not yet understand.7
6
The testing used at the time could not determine in what form the male DNA took, whether
semen, salvia, skin cells, etc. But it was clear that male DNA that did not belong to Elkins and
appeared to be from the same man whose DNA was found on Johnson’s vaginal swab and Brooke’s
underwear.
7
The judge who wrote this opinion was still on the bench when Elkins was later proven
innocent and exonerated, and in fact, signed the order that exonerated Elkins. This same judge later
granted DNA testing to an OIP client in a powerfully written opinion that reflected a deep
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FALSE JUSTICE AND THE “TRUE” PROSECUTOR
793
Shortly after this defeat, however, while I was preparing the appellate brief,
something quite amazing happened. Elkins’ wife, Melinda Elkins, who was also
the daughter of Johnson and aunt of Brooke, had for years been attempting to find
the person who committed these crimes against her family members and caused
her husband to be wrongfully convicted.
She eventually narrowed her
investigation to a convicted pedophile named Earl Mann, who her investigation
showed had been living near Johnson’s home at the time the crimes occurred. She
also discovered that by 2005, Mann was in prison for raping young girls. Out of
thirty-three prisons in Ohio, Mann was coincidentally serving time in the same
prison as Elkins. Ms. Elkins alerted Elkins to Mann’s presence.
After attempting for two months to collect Mann’s DNA on the sly, Elkins
was finally able to do so in June of 2005 when he saw Mann put his cigarette out
in a clean ashtray and walk from the prison room. Elkins took out a clean tissue he
had been carrying in his pocket in case such an opportunity ever arose and picked
up the cigarette butt. He then mailed it from the prison to the DNA lab that had
done the earlier DNA tests in his case.
I will never forget the call I received from the lab in early September of 2005
telling me that the DNA found on Johnson’s vaginal swab and Brooke’s underwear
matched the DNA on the cigarette butt Elkins had collected from Mann. When I
got that call, I was obviously ecstatic at first, but this elation soon turned to
concern. During the hearing in March of 2005, the Summit County prosecutors I
had litigated against when trying to free Elkins had, in my opinion, been so closeminded and arrogant in their beliefs that Elkins was guilty that I sensed they would
never change their minds no matter what type of evidence we produced.8
The prosecutors who had handled the March 2005 hearing were the same
prosecutors who had tried Elkins’ case before the jury many years earlier. The
Elkins conviction had been a trophy of sorts for them, it seemed, and they appeared
personally invested in making sure the case was not overturned. Even though, in
my opinion, the evidence was clear in March of 2005 that Elkins was innocent, the
prosecutors during the hearing continued to dramatically refer to him in the packed
courtroom as “Clarence Elkins the Murderer” and “Clarence Elkins the Rapist”
throughout the three-day hearing, in front of Elkins’ children and family who were
in the audience. How Elkins sat there in his chair and stayed calm while the
prosecutors repeatedly pointed at him and loudly called him a murderer and rapist,
I could not imagine. I could barely sit still myself.
In addition, the Summit County assistant prosecutors on the case were
apparently so personally offended that I would dare attempt to undo their hard
understanding of DNA testing and the way it can be used to both convict the guilty and exonerate the
innocent. 8
In fact, one of the two prosecutors handling the March 2005 hearing stated to the media in
my presence that he was 100% certain that Clarence Elkins was guilty. The March 2005 hearing was
handled by two assistant Summit County prosecutors. When I refer to “the prosecution” or “the
prosecutors” when discussing the Elkins case, I refer only to those two prosecutors, and not the
elected county prosecutor or others employed by that office unless otherwise indicated.
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OHIO STATE JOURNAL OF CRIMINAL LAW
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work in convicting Elkins years earlier that during the three-day hearing in March
of 2005, they would not say hello to me or even acknowledge my existence, other
than to make occasional eye-rolls or sighs of sarcastic exasperation when I gave
my opening and closing statements or questioned witnesses. When I started off
each morning with a “Hello,” it echoed off the courtroom walls with no response,
reaction, or even eye contact. In years of litigating hotly contested cases in court, I
had always tried to get along with opposing counsel and not take things personally.
I had never experienced such a response from the opposing side.
Thus, by the time I received the results in September of 2005 showing that the
DNA from the crime scene matched Mann, I was adamant that this information
remain secret. I told Elkins’ immediate family, but urged them to keep it under
their hats. My concern was simple. After the behavior I had witnessed in March, I
had no confidence in the prosecutors’ ability to be fair and objective. I believed
there was a reasonable chance that if the prosecutors from the March, 2005 hearing
got wind that the DNA from the crime scene matched Mann, they would approach
Mann in prison and say, in essence: “We’ve got your DNA at the crime scene,
you’re facing the death penalty for murdering Judy Johnson, and you can save your
life if you tell us exactly how you and Clarence Elkins committed these crimes
together.” In that way, they could explain away the new DNA results while
maintaining their conviction against Elkins.
I did not believe the prosecutors would do this to intentionally frame an
innocent man. Rather, I believed that they were so convinced that Elkins was
guilty—and suffered from such a serious case of what has come in these cases to
be known as “prosecutorial tunnel-vision”—that they would immediately jump to
the conclusion that Mann and Elkins “obviously” committed the crimes together as
conspirators. They would reach this conclusion despite the fact that Brooke
testified that she only saw one perpetrator, that only Mann’s DNA was found at the
crime scene, that Mann and Elkins lived forty-five minutes from each other, and
that there was no evidence that Mann and Elkins had ever met, much less
committed such a heinous crime together.
And this is not paranoid fantasy on my part. As any lawyer who has done this
type of post-conviction DNA work can testify, this type of reaction from a
prosecutor is not far-fetched when a prosecutor has a case of tunnel vision. In case
after case across the country where DNA has proven an inmate innocent, the
prosecutors have suddenly changed the facts of the case to try to explain away the
new DNA results.9 In cases where, for example, the rape victim testified at trial
9
For a thorough discussion of what has become known as “prosecutorial tunnel vision,” see
for example, Susan Bandes, Loyalty to One's Convictions: The Prosecutor and Tunnel Vision, 49
HOW. L.J. 475 (2006); Jean Coleman Blackerby, Life After Death Row: Preventing Wrongful Capital
Convictions and Restoring Innocence After Exoneration, 56 VAND. L. REV. 1179, 1189 (2003);
Alafair Burke, Neutralizing Cognitive Bias: An Invitation to Prosecutors, 2 N.Y.U. J. L. & LIBERTY
512 (2007); Keith A. Findley, Defining Innocence, 74 ALB. L. REV. 1157 (2011); ); Keith A. Findley
& Michael S. Scott, The Multiple Dimensions of Tunnel Vision in Criminal Cases, 2006 WIS. L. REV.
291 (2006); Daniel S. Medwed, The Zeal Deal: Prosecutorial Resistance to Post-Conviction Claims
of Innocence, 84 B.U. L. REV. 125, 140–44 (2004); Aviva Orenstein, Facing the Unfaceable: Dealing
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FALSE JUSTICE AND THE “TRUE” PROSECUTOR
795
that there was only one rapist, and DNA later proved the convicted inmate
innocent, a prosecutor with tunnel vision will suddenly claim that the victim must
have been mistaken given all the stress of the situation, and that there must have
been two perpetrators—the inmate in prison and the man whose DNA is now
found in the rape kit.
This type of post-DNA revisionist history is so common that it has a name in
the innocence world—the “unindicted co-ejaculator theory.”10 In a case where
previously there was just one rapist, when the post-conviction DNA testing points
to someone other than the inmate, the prosecution will suddenly conjure up an
“unindicted co-ejaculator” who allegedly committed the crime with the inmate and
who is the only one of the two who left his semen in the place that was later
detectable. When the mind cannot accept that a mistake has been made, it latches
on to any other possible explanation that is offered no matter how seemingly farfetched, and no matter how much it contradicts known facts.
Thus, because of this concern, my desperate wish was to have someone fair
and neutral approach Mann, with video recorders running, to get Mann’s honest
and uninfluenced reaction when informed of the DNA results. I first contacted my
friends at the FBI from my days as a federal prosecutor. The FBI listened and
understood my concerns, but after they ran it up the flagpole internally, I was
informed that the FBI, a federal agency, did not have jurisdiction to interview
Mann in prison for a crime that was within state rather than federal purview.
While brainstorming about my next steps, I remembered my positive
interactions with Petro and Canepa while trying to get SB11 through the
legislature. I decided to try to get a personal meeting with Petro to see if he and
Canepa would hear my plea and ensure a fair interview of Mann that was recorded.
And although I had dealt with Petro and Canepa on the SB11 landscape, I was not
sure they would remember me or give me a private audience on such a sensitive
matter. This was a strange request for someone in my position to make of an
Attorney General, the head law enforcement in the state.
So the OIP co-founder John Cranley and I visited local State Senator Bill
Seitz, who Cranley trusted and knew was close to Petro. Seitz, a law-and-order
Republican, had been key in getting the DNA law passed a year or two earlier.
with Prosecutorial Denial in Post-Conviction Cases of Actual Innocence, 48 SAN DIEGO L. REV. 401
(2011; For the law enforcement perspective of tunnel vision, see Everett Doolittle, Perspective: The
Disease of Certainty, FBI LAW ENFORCEMENT BULLETIN (March 2012), http://www.fbi.gov/statsservices/publications/law-enforcement-bulletin/march-2012/perspective; Michael D. Ranalli,
Wrongful Convictions and Officer Safety: Shifting the Focus to the Process, 79 THE POLICE CHIEF
MAGAZINE
1,
26-29
(Jan.
2012),
available
at
http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?fuseaction=display_arch&article_id=2578
&issue_id=12012.
10
Orenstein, supra note 9, at 413–14; see also Andrew Martin, The Prosecution’s Case about
DNA, N.Y. TIMES, Nov. 25, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/magazine/dna-evidence-lakecounty.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&adxnnl=1&emc=eta1&adxnnlx=1322489283GVJNEEXwJE6dRy9JgIWOQw (discussing the useor rejectionof DNA evidence by prosecutors
in a high-profile rape case in Lake County, IL).
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After we described the situation and our concerns to Seitz, we asked Seitz if he
thought this was something we could bring to Petro’s attention in confidence.
Could we trust Petro? Seitz said that he knew Petro, that he knew Petro would
want to hear the story, and that we could trust Petro. Seitz then called Petro from
the phone on his desk, and within two minutes we had the Attorney General on
speakerphone with the private audience we had been seeking. We explained the
problem. Petro listened and asked many questions. The call lasted maybe twenty
minutes. Before ending the call, Petro indicated that he would take the matter
under advisement, that we could count on him to take our request seriously, and
that our conversation would remain confidential for the time being.
Within a day or two of this call, however, another strategy I had been working
on panned out. I had leaked the information about the Mann DNA match to a
reporter I trusted and asked him to try to record an interview with Mann in prison.
The reporter called me back a few days later and told me he had managed to get a
prison call with Mann, pretending like he was interviewing Mann about Mann’s
own case. During the call, the reporter brought up Elkins and asked if Mann had
known Elkins before they served time together in prison. Mann was unequivocal
in the recording that he had never seen Elkins before they met in prison. After
hearing this, my concerns were somewhat alleviated. If the prosecution now
attempted to “flip” Mann to implicate Elkins in an “unindicted co-ejaculator”
move, we would be able to impeach such attempts with a tape in which Mann,
speaking off the cuff, sounded pretty convincing that had never met Elkins before
they met in the penitentiary.
Despite the success of getting Mann on tape, and because Petro had sounded
so sincere in our conference call, I decided to continue following through with
Petro to see if, by any chance, we could enlist his help in convincing the Summit
County officials to finally drop the case against Elkins and go after Mann. I
followed up our phone call to Petro with a detailed letter summarizing the situation
and expressly asking that he work on our behalf to broker a resolution with the
local prosecutors.
Shortly thereafter, in October of 2005, I held a press conference in Summit
County, along with investigator Martin Yant who had worked on the case, to
announce the new DNA results implicating Mann. The night before the press
conference, I called the Summit County Prosecutor to tell her of the results and
inform her that we would be holding a press conference the following day.
Although up to that time I had only dealt with her underlings, who had come
across as close-minded and less than professional, the County Prosecutor was very
reasonable on the telephone and assured me that the DNA match to Mann would
be taken seriously by her office.
The revelation about Mann appeared in large font on the front page of the
local papers the day after the press conference. But when I read the quotes the
reporters had obtained from the prosecutors that day and in the weeks that
followed, I knew my original paranoia had not been misplaced. Despite now
having DNA test results that placed Mann at the crime scene, it appeared that
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FALSE JUSTICE AND THE “TRUE” PROSECUTOR
797
Summit County was going to continue fighting Elkins’ exoneration. They
repeatedly dismissed the new DNA results in the press as insignificant and
inconclusive, while insisting that Elkins was rightfully behind bars and would
remain so for life.
What happened next is, I believe, unprecedented in any such case anywhere in
the country before or since the Elkins case. And it is one of the things that makes
Petro stand out as such a heroic figure. I received a call from Canepa a few days
later stating that he and Petro had received my letter and spent the last few weeks
examining the case in great detail. They had come to the conclusion that Elkins
was innocent. Further, they had read the responses of the prosecutors in the
newspaper, and had been shocked that they were not agreeing to release Elkins.
Canepa had reached out to the prosecutors several times to set up a meeting to
discuss the matter, but the invitations had been repeatedly snubbed.
Canepa then told me that Petro would not sit by idly and let Elkins sit in
prison any longer. Petro did not have the legal authority under Ohio law to
overturn the decision of the local prosecutor. He would, however, join the OIP in
filing briefs on Elkins’ behalf and supporting his innocence. And he would use his
position as AG as a bully pulpit to attempt to pressure the local prosecutors into
doing the right thing. And that is exactly what happened next. Petro held a press
conference announcing his support of Elkins and expressing frustration at the
position of the local prosecutors. He then took the prosecution on in the press over
a several week period, and his comments grew in intensity each week as the
prosecutors dug in their heels. This caused the Elkins case to be discussed heavily
on talk radio, blogs, and in all other forms of media in Northeastern Ohio. Petro’s
battle with the local prosecutors appeared to really be turning up the heat on them.
This public battle between Petro and the local prosecutors over the fate of
Elkins continued through November and early December of 2005. On December
14, 2005, I received a call from the DNA lab that another piece of evidence—a
pubic hair that had been found on the gown Brooke Sutton was wearing when she
was attacked—came back to match the DNA profile of Mann. I immediately
called Petro’s office and informed them of this new result. Petro decided to have a
joint press conference with the OIP the next morning to announce the latest DNA
results and pressure the local prosecutors to release Elkins by Christmas. I
informed the prosecutors by fax that we had obtained new DNA results, and that
we would be holding a joint AG/OIP press conference the following morning.
On the morning of December 15th, shortly before our press conference
commenced in Petro’s office in Columbus at around 11am, Petro received a fax
from the local prosecutor announcing that they were dropping all charges against
Elkins and allowing him to be released from prison that day. One can imagine the
jubilation that ensued. A few hours later, we were in Mansfield, Ohio, greeting
Elkins at the prison doors and watching him reunite with his sons and the rest of
his family.
The prosecution later revealed that after our first DNA tests came back
implicating Mann, they had begun a series of interrogations of Mann in prison.
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Eventually, Mann made incriminating statements that convinced them of Mann’s
guilt and Elkin’s innocence. To this day, the Summit County prosecutors
sometimes claim that Elkins was not exonerated by DNA testing. Rather, they
claim that their interrogation of Mann was what broke the case open and resulted
in Elkins’ freedom.11 While this seems nonsensical to me, what I really care about
is the final result. And I know that Elkins’ freedom would not have been realized
nearly as quickly, if at all, if it had not been for the courageous intervention of Jim
Petro.
I know of no other Attorney General in the United States who has, before or
since, taken on an entrenched local prosecutor to fight for an innocent inmate like
Petro did with Elkins in 2005. At that time, Petro was looking at a run for
Governor of Ohio in the next election. Sticking his neck out for someone in prison
convicted of murder is so politically risky for someone in his position that it
simply is not done. When Petro describes his decision to come out in support of
Elkins in False Justice, he depicts it as a “no-brainer,”12 a simple decision because
the right answer was so clear. Now that I know him so well, I know that this is
true. That is how Petro thinks, plain and simple. “This is the right answer, so this
is what I will do.” It is not more complicated than that.
III. INNOCENCE REFORM, ROGER DEAN GILLISPIE, AND MORE
Jim Petro did not prevail in his campaign for Governor, and thus left the
position of AG in 2007 to reenter private practice. Within a month of leaving
office, Petro contacted me and expressed his interest in working pro bono for the
OIP.
As a result, in the four years since leaving office, Petro and I have worked
closely together on a number of innocence-related projects. Most notably, I asked
Petro to spearhead the effort to push our new Innocence Protection Act, SB77,
through the legislature.13 This bill contained the complete package of reforms that
the Innocence Network has been pushing for years in states all across the country.
11
The prosecutors in Summit County who handled the interrogation of Mann, I was told,
were not the same prosecutors who originally tried and convicted Elkins, and who handled the March
2005 hearing. I was told that these original prosecutors were removed from the case once the match
to Mann was obtained and made public. The new prosecutors who interrogated Mann, or who
supervised the police interrogation of Mann, did not know, to my knowledge, that a reporter had
obtained a secretly recorded conversation of Mann in which Mann stated that he did not know Elkins.
Thus, to their credit, it appears that my initial fears regarding the “unindicted co-ejaculator theory”
were not borne out with respect to the prosecutors who later handled the case and supervised the
interrogation of Mann.
12
PETRO & PETRO, supra note 1, at 43–44.
13
This bill arose out of a joint project between the Ohio Innocence Project and The Columbus
Dispatch. The project had many components, including seeking DNA testing in thirty cases. For
more details, see Test of Convictions: A Dispatch Investigation, THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH,
http://www.dispatch.com/content/topic/special-reports/test-of-convictions-2.html (last visited Mar.
24, 2012); see also Innocence Protection Act, S.B. 77, 128 G.A. (Ohio 2010).
2012]
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It contained: (1) eyewitness identification reforms, requiring the police to follow
best practices in showing photo lineups to witnesses in order to increase accuracy
and decrease misidentifications; (2) a DNA preservation law, requiring the police
and prosecutors to save the biological material in homicide and sexual assault
cases so that inmates would have a chance to prove their innocence; (3) police
incentives for the recording of interrogations in certain cases, to provide a clean
record for review where the defendant alleges that he made a false confession; and
(4) expansions in the original DNA law, SB11, that Jim and I worked on together
in 2003 when we first met.14
Jim spent countless hours in 2008 through 2010 talking to legislators and law
enforcement associations championing the new bill. He traveled with me to
statewide police and prosecutor meetings to speak in front of large groups to
garner support, or at least to soften resistance. The bill passed the Senate in 2009
and then the House in 2010. It took more than two years to get the bill through
both chambers, and the fight was not easy. It required more work than I ever
imagined. By the time the bill entered the House, working on the bill had become
my full-time job. I tried to cram my OIP cases and law professor things like
teaching classes into little slots of time when I was not working on the bill. But
Jim was with me every step of the way, testifying on behalf of subcommittees and
setting up private meetings with legislators when necessary to push the bill. He
studied the empirical research behind the reforms and could recite the essential
facts and statistics with ease.
The bill was eventually signed into law by Governor Ted Strickland on April
5, 2010.15 It has been called a “national model” and the “one of the most important
pieces of criminal justice legislation in Ohio in a century.”16 It will prevent an
untold number of future wrongful convictions that we will never know or hear
about because they will be prevented from happening in the first place. And it
would not have been possible without the credibility, leverage, and tireless
dedication of Jim Petro. After leaving office, Jim also volunteered his time and
talents to a number of OIP cases, including the Dayton, Ohio, case of Roger Dean
Gillispie. Although I will not detail the facts of the Gillispie case here (Petro
describes the case in great detail in False Justice), suffice it to say Petro has
worked very hard for a wrongfully convicted man, in prison for twenty years for a
rape he did not commit, who does not have DNA to prove his innocence because
the police and prosecutors did not preserve the evidence from the crime scene.
14
See Alana Salzberg, Ohio Passes Major Package of Reforms on Wrongful Convictions;
Governor is Expected to Sign Bill, Making Ohio a National Model, INNOCENCE PROJECT (March 16,
2010),
http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/Ohio_Passes_Major_Package_of_Reforms_on_
Wrongful_Convictions_Governor_Is_Expected_to_Sign_Bill_Making_Ohio_a_National_Model.php
15
See Alana Salzberg, Governor Strickland Signs Groundbreaking Reform Package On
Wrongful Convictions, Making Ohio a National Model, INNOCENCE PROJECT (Apr. 5, 2010),
http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/Governor_Strickland_Signs_Groundbreaking_Reform_Pac
kage_On_Wrongful_Convictions_Making_Ohio_a_National_Model.php.
16
See Salzberg, supra note 14. 800
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While it is politically risky for someone like Petro to assert innocence in a case
without DNA, Petro made this decision after thoroughly reviewing the case
because he believed it was the right thing to do. Petro’s talents and credibility
have served Gillispie well: Petro’s argument to the Second District Court of
Appeals resulted in a reversal and remand to the district court for a hearing.
Jim also dedicated his time to help Ohio’s DNA exonerees obtain adequate
compensation from the state. I had become gradually more and more concerned
about compensation from 2003 through 2007, because I saw our exonerees
represented by attorneys who charged them too much in my opinion (up to onethird of their state settlement), defaulted their compensation claims through
negligence, and even in some cases got in disputes with exonerees about attorneys’
fees. In one instance, for example, an attorney sued Elkins in a dispute over his
fees, even though Elkins had already paid out more than he should have to
attorneys, and had generously given away most of the rest of his settlement to
family members. Elkins had little left in his pocket by this time, but the attorney’s
suit went forward nonetheless. The attorney used a court order to seize some of
Elkins’ few remaining assets. In my opinion, even if the attorney was correct on
the merits of the contractual dispute, it should have, by that time, been chalked up
as a pro bono case.
As a result, by the time Petro left office, I wanted to put together a team of
trusted attorneys who would litigate the compensation suits while keeping
expenses and fees down, putting as much money as possible into the exonerees’
pockets. Since that time, with the help of Petro and others,17 DNA exonerees
Robert McClendon and Raymond Towler have obtained compensation from the
state with less than three percent of their settlements going to costs, expert
witnesses, and attorney’s fees combined.
For all of these reasons, I had the honor of presenting Petro with the
Innocence Network’s “Champion of Justice Award” at the annual Innocence
Network conference on April 8, 2011. This award is given to only one person each
year, and is given to the person who has done the most to further the cause of the
wrongfully convicted. At my nomination, Petro was selected by the Innocence
Network Board of Directors over a field of impressive advocates and public
officials from across the country (and, indeed, the world).
When Petro received the award in front of a crowd of more than 500 people,
nearby on display was a painting that OIP client Gillispie had painted for him as a
gift. This painting, entitled “Native Cowboy,” appears below with the note to
Petro that Gillispie wrote on the back. The “Native Cowboy” shows a subject that
appears half Native American and half cowboy. Gillispie told me that he sees
Petro as the “Native Cowboy,” because he is a prosecutor who willingly changed
his clothing and became a “defense attorney” to help Gillispie and so many others
in Gillispie’s position.
17
Ohio attorney Michele Berry has been the lead attorney on some of these cases with
Gregory Cohen also providing valuable assistance.
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The postscript of False Justice ends with Petro movingly discussing his hope
that one day we would win the Gillispie case, and Gillispie would be free once
again and able to reunite with his family and restart his life. In this respect, I can
go beyond reviewing False Justice, and can offer an update. On December 22,
2011, Gillispie was released from prison after Federal Magistrate Judge Michael
Merz threw out his conviction because of police misconduct. Three days later,
Gillispie was able to spend his first Christmas in twenty years with his friends and
family. For the first week of Gillispie's release, his parent’s house, where Dean
now resides, was a constant flow of friends and well-wishers, and the hugs and
tears flowed freely. Jim and Nancy Petro, through Jim's work on the case and their
book chronicling the injustice of Gillispie's case, helped repair a small piece of the
world that had been badly fractured. To that end Dean, and I, are forever in their
debt.18
18
The details of Dean's victory in federal court, and his release from prison, including video
footage, see Deborah Rieselman, UC Students Help Free Dean Gillispie from Prison, UC MAGAZINE,
http://magazine.uc.edu/favorites/web-only/Innocence/Gillispie.html.
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This painting is Gillispie's interpretation of a similar work by artist J.D.
Challenger. The Challenger estate has granted permission to reprint Gillispie's
interpretation of this Challenger piece in this journal.
2012]
FALSE JUSTICE AND THE “TRUE” PROSECUTOR
The Native Cowboy:
It is a great honor and privilege to present this painting to Mr. Jim Petro,
a man of the people, one who has never lost sight of the common
working man and who has put forth a great effort to correct a wrong that
occurred nearly twenty years ago.
Faith and encouragement has once again been restored to a family that
had lost all but their prayers. They can now see a twinkle of light at the
end of this long dark nightmare that gives hope that the truth will free an
innocent man, their son.
This painting was done with heart-felt gratitude and personal integrity for
a man who has and will continue to make a difference.
Dean "Spiz" Gillispie
803
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IV. FALSE JUSTICE
False Justice: Eight Myths that Convict the Innocent, is Petro’s memoir of his
prosecutorial and political career, and his eventual enlightenment to the problem of
wrongful conviction.19 In some respects, I have already reviewed the book,
because I have told several of the key stories that Petro tells in the book—from
those of enacting SB77 to the Elkins and Gillispie cases—albeit from my
perspective rather than Petro’s.
Although the stories are Petro’s, the book was written primarily by Petro’s
wife, Nancy Petro. Nancy has become a dynamo on the issue of wrongful
convictions in her own right. After writing the book, she has continued to update
about wrongful convictions on the False Justice Facebook page,20 updating readers
with all that is going on in the movement. I am half convinced that Nancy Petro
may know more about the issue of wrongful convictions than any professor
teaching on the subject anywhere in the United States. Her energy is boundless,
and her passion for the subject never ceases to amaze me.
Years ago, Nancy went through the same enlightenment about wrongful
convictions as did Jim when he served as AG, and she resolved then to learn as
much about the issue as possible. She has told me that she woke up one night in
the middle of the night with the idea that she and Jim had to write a book together
to share their experiences with others.
The resulting book is interesting, informative, and easy to read. I have had a
number of people tell me that they started reading it and could not put it down,
finishing it in less than two days. Although there have been a series of books on
the subject written in recent years, including John Grisham’s The Innocent Man, I
believe that False Justice might be the most important book to the Innocence
Movement in the long run. It has a particular ability to influence in a way that
other books cannot, specifically because it is written by a former AG and the
perspective of a law-and-order Republican. It describes how Jim gradually
becomes aware of the problem, and makes clear that his action plan to help the
wrongfully convicted is not in any way inconsistent with the interests of law
enforcement. Every prosecutor and police officer should be encouraged to read
this book, as it will resonate with that particular audience more than other books on
the subject.
The format of the book is also clever in that it tells interesting stories while
revealing eight myths that lead to wrongful convictions. These myths are: (1)
everyone in prison claims innocence; (2) our system almost never convicts an
innocent person; (3) only guilty people confess; (4) wrongful convictions are the
result of innocent human error; (5) an eyewitness is the best evidence; (6)
PETRO & PETRO,supra note 1.
20
See Nancy Petro, False Justice, FACEBOOK, http://www.facebook.com/pages/FalseJustice/127688090612221 (last visited Mar. 24, 2012).
19
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FALSE JUSTICE AND THE “TRUE” PROSECUTOR
805
conviction errors get corrected on appeal; (7) it dishonors the victim to question a
conviction; and (8) if the system has problems, the pros will fix them.21
I would like to comment briefly on two of the myths illuminated by the
Petros. Myth number six in particular, that conviction errors get corrected on
appeal, is a very troubling one.22 I find that even well-educated lawyers, with
years of experience in the criminal justice system, sometimes buy into this myth.
For example, about three years ago, I asked a prosecutor who specializes in capital
cases to speak to my criminal law class. A student raised his hand and asked the
prosecutor whether he has any concerns that our system could ever convict and
execute an innocent person. The prosecutor responded with strenuous resolve that
by the time someone is executed in this country, they have had several direct
appeals and then several courts examine the case in post-conviction habeas
litigation. He made the comment that by the time someone is executed, “probably
ten or twelve courts have reviewed the case in depth, including the facts and any
new evidence, and specifically determined that the death row inmate is not
innocent.”
This again was one of those moments where the prosecutor’s comments
seemed so detached from reality; yet, he so clearly believed what he was saying,
that I was sitting there wondering which one of us was on Mars. Having done this
work for many years, I know that the system is set up primarily to look for legal
errors having nothing to do with innocence or guilt. The procedural barriers are set
up with layer after layer, attempting to prohibit any sort of true, objective, de novo
review of the facts.23 That a lawyer who specializes in this work could honestly
See PETRO & PETRO, supra note 1.
Id. at 233–34.
23
After conviction, on direct appeal, if an inmate argues that the evidence was insufficient for
conviction, all inferences are drawn in favor of the party that won below—the prosecution. Thus, if,
for example, a defendant presented an alibi defense but this defense was not accepted by the jury, the
court of appeals must assume that the jury found the defendant’s alibi witnesses to not be not
credible. This is a far cry from a true, objective evaluation of whether the defendant’s alibi defense
was valid or not. To the contrary, the law eschews such a responsibility on appeal by construing all
facts against the defendant, rather than making a neutral inquiry into the validity of such facts.
Similarly, when an inmate argues on direct appeal that the conviction was against the manifest weight
of the evidence, the appellate court also does not make an objective, de novo review of the record. In
reviewing such a claim, an appellate court may not merely substitute its view for that of the jury, but
must find that “in resolving conflicts in the evidence, the jury clearly lost its way and created such a
manifest miscarriage of justice that the conviction must be reversed and a new trial ordered.” State v.
Thompkins, 678 N.E.2d 541, 546 (Ohio 1997). Accordingly, reversal on manifest weight grounds is
reserved for “the exceptional case in which the evidence weighs heavily against the conviction.” Id.
In other words, the only time a neutral evaluation occurs is at trial, and if the jury makes a mistake,
that is pretty much it except in truly exceptional cases.
But in most post-conviction cases, the inmate does not claim innocence based on the trial
evidence that was reviewed on direct appeal, but on new evidence that surfaced after conviction and
the direct appeals were exhausted. If new evidence surfaces many years later, layer after layer of
procedural barriers exist to inhibit the courts from considering such evidence. For example, if the
defendant had previously filed a post-conviction motion, courts often dismiss the new motion
claiming that the defendant already had his “one bite at the apple.” Or, in many other cases, courts
21
22
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believe that ten or twelve courts have fully and openly examined the facts of a case
and each determined that an inmate is clearly guilty before he is executed seems
astonishing. Yet, I think that this prosecutor honestly believed what he was
saying. I think he had closed his eyes to reality and bought into a myth. If a
prosecutor working in the capital punishment system can believe this myth, then it
is easy to see how the public would buy into it as well.
I would also like to comment on myth number four, that wrongful convictions
happen because of innocent human error.24 The Petros in False Justice discuss
intentional Brady violations (the failure of the police and prosecutors to disclose
exculpatory evidence) that result in wrongful convictions, but the majority of
wrongful conviction cases occur without a Brady violation or any intentional
wrongdoing.25 But does this mean, therefore, that most wrongful convictions
occur by innocent human error? I think the answer depends on how one defines
“innocent error.”
I believe, from personal experience, that the vast majority of wrongful
convictions do not occur because a police officer or prosecutor intentionally sought
to convict an innocent person. Rather, I believe most occur because of ignorance
and negligence—prosecutors introduce unreliable eyewitness testimony or “junk”
science fully believing that they are introducing solid, reliable evidence, and thus
are seeking a just conviction. Such prosecutors are innocent of any intentional
wrongdoing. They are not innocent, however, in the sense that they have great
responsibility over the lives and freedom of others, but have often failed to take the
necessary steps to question their own activities and learn the problems with the
system.
The DNA exonerations over the past two decades and the corresponding
scientific studies of these cases have revealed deep systemic flaws with eyewitness
identifications, junk science, and other problems.26 The studies offer an
will dismiss the new evidence petition on grounds that the new evidence could have been discovered
earlier, thus, the motion is untimely. Any lawyer who has litigated post-conviction innocence claims
knows that trying to get through all the procedural barriers so that the new evidence can be
considered is like walking through a minefield. And while in some cases the field of landmines is
traversed, and the new evidence is considered on the merits, the idea that death row inmates have ten
to twelve different courts that make independent inquiries into the facts to determine if an inmate is
innocent before they are executed is utter nonsense. In the vast majority of cases, the jury decides the
facts, and after that, there is no objective, de novo review of those facts. In such cases, if the jury
made a mistake, the inmate is out of luck unless he is lucky enough to have some sort of procedural
error in his case that will allow him to someday reopen it.
24
PETRO & PETRO, supra note 1, at 228–29.
25
Statistical charts show most wrongful convictions do not include a finding of intentional
wrongdoing by police or prosecutor. See The Causes of Wrongful Conviction, INNOCENCE PROJECT,
http://www.innocenceproject.org/understand/ (last visited Mar. 24, 2012) [hereinafter The Causes];
see also Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963). 26
For a discussion of the systematic flaws in our criminal justice system revealed by the
Innocence Movement, see JIM DWYER, BARRY SCHECK & PETER NEUFELD, ACTUAL INNOCENCE:
WHEN JUSTICE GOES WRONG AND HOW TO MAKE IT RIGHT (3rd ed. 2003); BRANDON GARRETT,
2012]
FALSE JUSTICE AND THE “TRUE” PROSECUTOR
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unprecedented learning moment if we are willing to listen with open minds. The
failure to respond to the problem of wrongful conviction, the failure to explore and
learn from our mistakes, is in my opinion, where the fault lies as the system
continues to resist change and reform.
V. THE ELUSIVE “TRUE” PROSECUTOR
In this final chapter, I offer the observation that, from my own experience,
prosecutors in this country are too often not like Jim Petro. Too many prosecutors
suffer from tunnel vision and resist efforts to correct wrongful convictions in ways
that contradict our ethical norms, as I will discuss in more detail in a moment.
Before I do, however, I would like to make a few political observations that are
apparent to me after serving for many years as a prosecutor in the federal judicial
system, and then for more than a decade as a post-conviction innocence lawyer in
the state judicial system. All of these observations are overbroad generalizations,
and none of them apply in all instances. In other words, there are clear exceptions
to each of these observations.
First, I have noticed that at least in Ohio, Republicans are generally more
receptive to innocence issues and the plight of the wrongfully convicted than
Democrats. This might seem counterintuitive, as Democrats are stereotyped as the
“bleeding hearts,” but I have found this to be true in terms of all three branches of
government: judges, prosecutors, and legislators. Where I typically find the stiffest
resistance in the courtroom is in Democratic counties with Democrats holding the
elected office of judge and prosecutor. In contrast, where I have had my most
reasonable conversations with the opposition has been in Republican strongholds.
When working to pass SB11 and SB77, the legislators who seemed the most
motivated to pass the bills were on the Republican side of the aisle. Although
many Democrats supported the bill, the strongest resistance seemingly always
came from the Democratic side. People will sometimes comment to me that it is
strange that Jim Petro, a lifelong Republican, now is a champion of the Innocence
Movement. But this fact is not inconsistent with what I have witnessed all across
Ohio from Republicans.
I do not know why it is the case that Democrats seem generally less inclined
to support innocence issues than Republicans. I suspect that is has to do with
politics. Democrats perhaps fear they are perceived as “soft on crime,” and thus,
go overboard to show how tough they are. Republicans, on the other hand, are
given the benefit of the doubt on crime by the public, and thus, might feel secure
enough to be reasonable. There is no empirical proof of this assertion, but I
strongly suspect this is what is going on.
Second, after practicing for many years before appointed judges in the federal
system, the politics infused into OIP cases in the elected state system in Ohio have
CONVICTING THE INNOCENT: WHERE CRIMINAL PROSECUTIONS GO WRONG (2011); see also The
Causes, supra note 25.
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been nothing short of a culture shock for me. I have seen a number of cases where
it appears that the trial court judges have denied our strong innocence claims, or
our request for DNA testing, simply on grounds of politics, not wanting to give
any ammunition to their campaign opponents who might try to paint them as soft
on crime. In contrast, I never got the sense that the outcome of any case was
preordained in the federal system. Although judges had their personal politics that
could influence a case, there was no sense that outside pressures routinely entered
the equation. My preference for an appointment system that insulates the court
from political pressures has gone from slight to stringent in the past decade. I now
know that the fair, neutral legal system that is often taught in law school is a farce
in some jurisdictions, and I try to make sure my students’ eyes have been opened
to this reality.
Finally, I have noticed that, by and large, police officers are more open to
innocence claims than prosecutors. Prosecutors will frequently become defensive
as soon as they sense that a post-conviction innocence claim is on the horizon,
even if the prosecutor who handled the case many years earlier has retired and the
current prosecutor simply inherited the old case once it was reactivated. Many
police officers, in contrast, when called by an OIP member and asked about the old
file, will start asking questions about their old cases, become curious about the new
innocence claim, and seem genuinely interested in hearing whether a mistake
might have been made.
I do not know why this is the case but suspect that it might have to do with the
adversarial system. Prosecutors live in the adversarial criminal justice system, and
perceive that their job is to fight the opposition. Police officers, in contrast, have
some involvement in the adversarial system, but are not as deeply entrenched.
Much of their activity is simply to collect evidence and turn it over to prosecutors,
who then start the adversarial proceedings.
This point dovetails with my final point—that we do not yet have enough
prosecutors who are “true” prosecutors in the vein of Petro. I have already
described unreasonable resistance from prosecutors to Elkins’ attempts at
exoneration, once DNA testing proved him innocent. This sort of resistance is
something we have seen too frequently at the OIP.
I will illustrate this point further by describing how prosecutors often respond
at an earlier stage—when we are first seeking DNA testing in an old case. Before
going any further, let me set the stage for how these DNA cases typically arise. In
the OIP, we receive letters from inmates seeking assistance. When a letter is
received, the first inquiry we make is whether the inmate is asserting innocence.
Often, inmates will write complaining about the sentence they received, conditions
in prison, or about some other legal error in their trial, but they do not clearly assert
innocence. If the inmate does not assert actual, factual innocence, the case is
rejected.
If the inmate asserts actual innocence, we examine the case to determine if it
is the type of case where there might be DNA evidence that could shed light on the
2012]
FALSE JUSTICE AND THE “TRUE” PROSECUTOR
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issue of innocence or guilt.27 If it is a rape case, we look to see whether a rape kit
was taken at a hospital following the attack. If it is a murder case, we look to see
whether, for example, there was a struggle, such that the perpetrator’s DNA was
likely left under the victim’s fingernails. Or, we look to see if the perpetrator left
something like his hat at the scene, or handled items at the scene like rope, beer
bottles, or cigarettes. If it appears that DNA could exist that would identity the
perpetrator, we are likely to proceed with the case and seek DNA testing.
Now, at this point, when first seeking DNA testing, we have made absolutely
no judgment about whether the inmate is innocent or guilty. And we are not
invested in the answer. I tell my students, and it is the OIP’s policy, that the best
answer we could get is that the inmate is confirmed to be guilty. If the DNA
testing confirms guilt, then the perpetrator is not still on the street committing
more crimes, the victim does not have to be told that he or she made a mistake, and
a person in prison falsely claiming innocence is silenced. The OIP has had a
number of cases result in confirmations of guilt. Such a result is not inconsistent
with the OIP’s mission, and I lose no sleep at night in a DNA case wondering if
someone is innocent or guilty. The point is to perform the testing and let the chips
fall where they may.
As a result of this position, the OIP is not like the typical defense attorney,
whose obligation it is to represent the client regardless of guilt or innocence. We
make clear up front to inmates seeking our assistance that we are a specialized
public interest group interested in the truth, and that when evidence surfaces that
undermines the innocence claim, we will withdraw from the case.28 Withdrawal
occurs frequently, as one can imagine.
In some of the cases where DNA is available and we seek testing, it might
appear that there is very little chance that the inmate is innocent. In some instances
I feel 85% confident that the inmate is guilty. In other instances I might not have a
feeling either way. But history has proven that even in cases where the evidence
against the inmate at trial seemed overwhelming (such as ten different
eyewitnesses testifying that they are positive the defendant was the perpetrator29),
DNA sometimes proves the trial evidence wrong. It is better to be safe than sorry.
Since an Ohio DNA laboratory30 provides free DNA testing to Ohio inmates
seeking testing, it costs taxpayers nothing to find out.
27
The OIP will also, on some occasions, work on non-DNA cases. The Gillispie case,
referred to previously and discussed in FALSE JUSTICE, is one such example. In this section I refer
only to the OIP’s screening process in DNA cases, because that is all that is relevant to the example I
later use to illustrate prosecutorial hostility to innocence claims.
28
To view the OIP’s representation agreement with inmates, see Ohio Innocence Project
(OIP) Screening Questionnaire, 1, 2, http://www.law.uc.edu/sites/default/files/oipquestionnaire.pdf
(last visited Mar. 24. 2012).
29
See CONVICTING THE INNOCENT, supra note 26, at 301 n.16. 30
The laboratory is DNA Diagnostics Center (DDC), located in Fairfield, Ohio. See DNA
DIAGNOSTIC CENTER, http://www.dnacenter.com (last visited Mar. 24, 2012).
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After determining that we want to move forward and seek DNA testing in a
case, we typically call the prosecutor’s office from which the case arose and ask
for consent to test. We explain that the testing will be done for free. Probably
about eighty percent of the time the answer is a resounding “No.” We then have to
commence litigation to win the right to test under Ohio’s DNA statute,31 which
sometimes takes years and costs the taxpayers perhaps tens of thousands of dollars
per case.32
In one case, in a county that shall remain nameless, I called, several years ago,
and asked for permission to perform DNA testing in an old rape case. To increase
the chances of obtaining consent, I followed up with an email offering that the OIP
would cover all the costs of testing (this was before the DNA lab began providing
free testing in Ohio). After the prosecution rejected my request, I filed suit in
common pleas court for the right to DNA testing. The trial court took several
months to litigate the case, and ultimately denied the right. The OIP then
appealed, and the parties had to file various briefs and litigate the case for another
year in the appellate court. The appellate court ultimately overturned the lower
court, holding that the case clearly fell within the parameters of Ohio’s DNA
statute. The case was then remanded back down to the lower court for DNA
testing. A few months later, we received the results which confirmed the guilt of
the inmate.
At that point in a case, we usually move to dismiss the litigation and withdraw
from the case. The prosecution notified us, however, that it wanted to have a
hearing in court where the case would be dismissed, rather than having it done by
paper filings as would typically occur. Although going to court to dismiss the case
seemed like a waste of time, we did not contest this request. The night before the
court hearing, however, a reporter I have known for several years called me and
told me, in sum, “the prosecutor is getting the media there in the morning, and they
are planning to publicly criticize the OIP for wasting taxpayer money for the past
two years, litigating a case for an inmate who turned out to be proven guilty. I’m
just giving you a heads up as to what is going on. And it is going to be handled by
the elected County Prosecutor, not the assistant prosecutor who has been handling
the case so far.”
After I received this call, I sent an email to the prosecutor’s office reminding
them that the OIP had agreed to pay for testing two years earlier. We could have
See O.R.C. §§ 2953.71–2953.83 (2012).
32
There is no statistic which shows how taxpayer money is spent opposing requests for DNA
testing. But when one considers all the hours that prosecutors spend writing their briefs—many times
20 or 30 pages in length—and preparing for hearings and oral arguments, the salary spent towards
such activity would be staggering in the typical case. And this is not to mention all the hours spent
by judges, clerks and court administrators handling the litigation in such cases, and writing judicial
opinions in both the trial court, court of appeals, and sometimes the Supreme Court of Ohio. It is
very easy to see that in some of the OIP cases that have been litigating in the courts for years, tens of
thousands of dollars in state employee salaries have been spent opposing DNA testing that would cost
nothing to simply perform in the first instance.
31
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FALSE JUSTICE AND THE “TRUE” PROSECUTOR
811
done the testing and confirmed the guilt of the inmate two years earlier with no
cost to the taxpayers. It was, in reality, the decision of the prosecution to oppose
free testing that wasted tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars.
I did not get a response to this email. The reporter called me back a few hours
later and informed me that the County Prosecutor had called off the media alert.
The next morning, the assistant prosecutor handled the dismissal of the case while
the elected County Prosecutor was nowhere in sight. The matter was dismissed
without fanfare. I chose not to raise the issue of how the prosecution had wasted
taxpayer money at the hearing or when called by the media later in the day.
I use this as one example of prosecutorial hostility to DNA requests and
claims of innocence. I do not have any explanation for such behavior. Prosecutors
are charged in our country to seek justice, not to win cases.33 The United States
Supreme Court once noted, for example, that prosecutors are “the representative
not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty . . . whose interest . .
. in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be
done.”34 But I rarely see this sort of dispassionate sense of fairness and objectivity
in Ohio. The game seems to be to win, and then “defend the conviction” at all
costs.
As a former prosecutor, I know that young lawyers go into prosecutorial work
to do good—to protect the public and defend the victim. Putting the bad guys
away is a necessary and admirable profession. And prosecutors who unreasonably
oppose post-conviction innocence claims are not doing so because they are corrupt
or are attempting to keep innocent people in prison. Rather, I believe that they
suffer from tunnel vision.
As a former prosecutor myself, I know how tunnel vision can develop. Much
of a prosecutor’s job is spent deflecting false attempts by criminals to avoid
responsibility for their criminal acts. I will provide one example from my own
experience. When I was a new federal prosecutor, I was in charge of a bank
robbery case. The FBI agents in charge of the investigation were convinced that it
was an inside job—that a teller who worked at the bank had set it up. The teller
denied any involvement, and did so convincingly. At one point, I put her in the
grand jury to testify, in an attempt to “crack” her by putting her under oath grilling
her about the inconsistencies in the story she gave police immediately after the
bank robbery. She began crying and pleading that that she was innocent, that the
FBI agents were ruining her life, and that her young son was so upset by all of this
that he was failing in school. She was so convincing in her performance that soon
the grand jurors started glaring at me as if to say, “get this poor innocent woman
33
See MODEL RULES OF PROF'L CONDUCT R. 3.8 cmt. 1 (2007) (“A prosecutor has the
responsibility of a minister of justice and not simply that of an advocate.”); see also Daniel S.
Medwed, The Prosecutor as Minister of Justice: Preaching to the Unconverted from the PostConviction Pulpit, 84 WASH. L. REV. 35, 39–40 (2009).
34
Berger v. United States, 295 U.S. 78, 88 (1935).
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out of here and stop harassing her.” After the grand jury episode, I told the FBI
agents that despite the suspicious circumstances, I believed she was not involved.
A few months later, the fingerprint results from the demand note came back.
The demand note used in the bank robbery consisted of letters cut from a magazine
and pasted on a white piece of paper. The teller’s fingerprints were on nearly
every letter as she held the magazine to cut out the letters. The FBI agents laughed
at my naiveté.
When these sorts of instances occur over and over again, over an extended
period of time, during a long career, I can understand how tunnel vision begins to
develop. The reflex develops to reject any and all arguments for innocence. You
know, from your years of experience as a prosecutor, that there has to be a catch
somewhere.
Prosecutorial tunnel vision of this nature occurs everywhere in the United
States—not just in Ohio. It is so pervasive that any lawyer who does postconviction innocence work can tell story after story like the ones I have told in this
article. A body of scholarly literature has developed that has studied and
catalogued the instances of tunnel vision arising in post-conviction innocence
claims from prosecutors through time.35
There are exceptions, to be sure. Ron O’Brien, Franklin County Prosecutor,
is as true a prosecutor as one can find. His interest is in justice and obtaining the
right outcome, and this interest has been reflected in how he has handled all his
cases with OIP, including the exonerations of Robert McClendon and Joseph
Fears. When talking with Ron O’Brien and the prosecutors in his office, you do
not sense that the hackles are up from the start. Our conversations proceed like
two objective, disinterested people trying to figure out the right answer for society
and justice generally.
Matthew Meyers is an assistant prosecutor in Cuyahoga County who also
seems genuinely motivated by doing the right thing rather than politics.
Interactions with prosecutors in Seneca, Clermont, and several other counties, have
proved that they are sometimes open to post-conviction DNA testing and
objectively and fairly examining the results.
In recent years, I have spent quite a bit of time outside of the United States
helping attorneys and scholars set up Innocence Network organizations in their
home countries. In Western European countries, where the systems are
inquisitorial rather than adversarial, scholars tell me that the prosecutors are trained
early on to seek the truth and to be as objective as possible. This responsibility is
taken seriously. Objectivity and fairness are part of the prosecutorial culture, and
it is ingrained in these attorneys from the start. Even defense attorneys from these
countries tell me that when they hear or read stories of prosecutorial resistance to
post-conviction innocence claims in the United States, they cannot fathom such
behavior. Western European defense attorneys have told me repeatedly that
prosecutors in their home country typically do not act that way.
35
See generally supra note 9 and accompanying text.
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FALSE JUSTICE AND THE “TRUE” PROSECUTOR
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Although I would not depart from the adversarial system for reasons too
complicated to elaborate on here, I have come to conclude that our system needs to
adopt some aspects of the inquisitorial system. Most notably, we need to do a
better job of enforcing the duty of the prosecutor to remain objective and seek
justice first and foremost. And while I understand how tunnel vision develops, it
does not mean that it should not be resisted, that we should not fight to minimize
it.
CONCLUSION
False Justice is a book that not only outlines the Innocence Movement, but
also provides a roadmap for how we can improve the criminal justice system in
this country. If we are to truly learn from the Innocence Movement, however, we
must do more to ensure that prosecutors follow the example of Jim Petro and
others like him. Reinvigorating our ethical standards by requiring prosecutors to
remain objective and seek justice, rather than convictions, is a starting point.
Encouraging all prosecutors and police officers to read False Justice, and to
emulate Petro’s example, is the best first step.